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People will ask me at times, like, what is it like to be the CEO of comp?
Do you meditate all day?
And I tell them, honestly, no, I am the most stressed out CEO you will ever meet.
And the reason I say that is because every second of every day, someone is turning to us for help.
That's David Koh of mental health and wellness app Calm, who just announced he's stepping down as CEO.
Today, David talks with me about this moment of transition, the mental health burdens of the workplace and how to tell the difference between stress that builds you up and stress that burns you out.
It's a surprisingly upbeat conversation about some serious stuff and there's a lot to learn and apply, so let's get to it.
I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.
I'm Bob Safian.
I'm here with David Koh, who has run mental health and wellness platform Calm as CEO since 2022.
David, thanks for joining us.
Bob, thanks for having me.
Really looking forward to today's discussion.
So the big news here, you've just announced that you've stepped down as CEO.
You're becoming a senior advisor to the board.
I have to say, I was surprised by this turn of events.
How did this come about?
I'm glad we're starting off with this.
Go right at the elephant in the room, you know?
Yeah, Bob, thank you for the question.
And I had made the decision to leave.
Really because, as I took a step back, I saw that Calm is a brand today that, for those of you who don't know, we've had over 180 million downloads of the product and growing in over 190 countries and seven different languages.
And we've really made strides in health outcomes.
That's where we're going with Calm Health.
But at the same time I'll tell you Bob, what's really become abundantly clear for myself is that we're in the midst of something that is so much bigger.
And it's so much bigger because what we're finding is everything is so much more interconnected than it was before.
And what I mean by that is there's a reliance on employers payers providers, apps like ourselves, other apps that are being developed at lightning speeds with AI and real policy, both at the federal and state level.
So it's really not just about one individual, one company.
It's really more about how do you create more of a movement?
And for myself.
I just felt it was the right time to take a step back, zoom out and really see if I could impact things at a larger scale.
Now I don't have all the answers on how I'm going to do it, because you're hitting me literally right after.
But I feel on a personal note, just more interconnected to comms and comms mission than ever before.
I just wanted to try to do it at a scale that I think can really kind of move this forward on a global basis.
I mean comms business, as well as your book and your podcast called Recharge.
They focus a lot on managing stress.
And I'm curious how your stress is with this project change.
Or or in the calm vernacular like how's your battery?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I gotta tell you my battery today is it's great.
Cause I was.
You know, when I think about my own battery, like my phone battery uh, I would tell you I feel fully charged, and I'm not just saying that.
I got a good night's sleep last night.
And for me, I always feel like the day starts well when it's not about the quantity of sleep.
I don't know if this is for you, Bob, but really the quality of sleep I got.
And I've really focused on that.
For me, it's been a non-negotiable.
And this change isn't weighing on your head.
It weighs on me.
Like I think, like everything else like, anytime you go through change, especially like life change, I think it's going to weigh on you.
But I just felt that it was the right time.
And I'm really looking forward to trying to do something that's really focused more on the mission and outcomes.
I mean during your tenure.
Like Calm has grown its footprint, as you say 180 million app downloads and you know millions of Americans reach through health insurers.
And you've partnered on botanical beverage and sleep earbuds and you helped pioneer so-called Calmtainment, bringing celebrity voices into the app right.
Matthew McConaughey.
That's right.
LeBron James, Harry Styles.
Are there things about your time at Calm that you're particularly proud of, that you look back on most strongly?
Absolutely.
Well, a couple of things.
I think the conversation around mental health is the most approachable it's ever been.
Not in all countries Bob, as we know, but here in the US it's probably the most approachable it's ever been, because people like you just mentioned are willing to talk about it.
I also am very proud when I take a step back.
I have two daughters and they both use the app on their own accord.
And for someone who's been in technology for so long, we don't always have that opportunity where our kids or family or friends get to use the things that we go build.
And I love the fact that they get to go use them.
And for myself.
The brand was there before I got here and I just helped to continue to steward and shepherd that brand.
We've really focused on the outcomes perspective now covering almost 48 million lives across multiple payer partners that we didn't have four years ago.
I wanted to prove that it could actually kind of resonate in healthcare, and we're well on our way there.
I mean, you know, a lot of our listeners here are business leaders and sometimes I feel, like you know, they don't always take mental health and wellness seriously.
You know, there's this phrase like wellness washing.
Absolutely.
And I'm just curious, how much do you see that?
How much is that going on?
And how much maybe it doesn't matter.
It can be wellness washing as long as they're doing it.
It's progress.
Well, listen, I'll give you a report we did just last year.
And it really starts at the top for so many of us.
Like we can have great HR teams, but if it's not embraced at the leadership level, I think things can get muted or it's just another benefit.
And so we went out and spoke to over 250 C-suite executives.
And what was really fascinating.
Because CEOs need this, they need the details and they need the numbers to know.
We went out there and asked them, how are you doing?
Over 80% of them said, I'm good.
We're good, right?
When you ask that question, though again because, as you know, you have to ask CCE executives the same question twice.
They were like, actually, I'm pretty stressed out.
And that was over 47% of them said, I'm pretty stressed.
And when we correlated even further, 28 said I actually feel I'm under major stress at this very moment.
And then when we pushed them even harder, almost 50% of them said, I'm thinking of stepping down.
And what was really interesting was that, as we pressed even further, we asked them well, are you sharing this with your employees?
Do they understand how stressed you're at?
And many of them said no, they didn't feel safe yet to have these conversations in more of a public format.
So when you ask me, like, how are CEOs feeling and do they believe in mental health?
Many of them do.
They're in reports and studies that we've done.
But just that right now, many of them too are feeling the stress.
I mean-
For you, like how much effort did it take for you to keep the calm workplace calm?
I mean, just because you're helping people with their mental state, that doesn't mean your team is any less pressure to you know to grow and build and do.
A hundred percent, Bob.
People will ask me at times, like, what is it like to be the CEO of Calm? do you meditate all day?
Do you just sit there and meditate all day?
And I tell them, honestly, no, I am the most stressed out CEO you will ever meet.
And it kind of catches them by surprise.
And the reason I say that is because every second of every day, someone is turning to us for help.
And I feel that pressure that, wherever they are in the world, or whatever moment they're in, they're asking us.
Whether it's 30 seconds, whether it's five seconds, whether it's 10 minutes, they're looking to us for some type of help in the moment.
It could be prevention or intervention types of moments.
And so I feel that pressure.
So when you ask at a company that's, I think, small and punches above its weight, we feel that pressure.
I feel that pressure.
I know my employees feel it, But I do try to practice what I preach.
And the biggest thing that I do is I try to be very vulnerable in front of them.
And I don't view vulnerability as a weakness.
So I will tell them when I'm feeling stressed.
I will tell them when things aren't going well.
I'm super transparent.
And I wasn't always that way because I used to view it as a weakness.
And today I'll tell you I view it as a strength.
I mean for some businesses.
The cost of mental stress can be hard for them to measure or they don't have facilities to do that.
How much did you hear that, you know, in trying to get resources committed to it?
I hear it all the time.
It starts from CFOs.
It starts from kind of CHROs.
And we talk about the ROI.
And now there's a lot of CFOs getting involved and they want to see the returns of all these different types of programs.
And a lot of times you have to just look at the raw facts of what's happening within your own organizations.
Do you see higher absenteeism?
Do you see employees that are quitting at an accelerated rate?
What is actually the root of that?
And so much of what we're finding is that stress and burnout are rampant in organizations today.
And the organizations that start to hit them head on and understand like okay, it's not just a benefit.
It's really got to be incorporated within the company and adopted.
We see those metrics start to go down.
I mean for all of us.
These days things feel very burdened.
You know, war with Iran and tariffs and AI disruption and economic uncertainty.
People feel isolated.
Like how much of comms growth in this whole category's growth has been because, like the world is getting worse,
I was asked this question during our last election.
And I was asked this also during the holidays.
And I would say, holiday stress is absolutely real.
Election stress is real.
Some organizations will see financial stress will be at the top of the list.
And some organizations will see they're much more attuned to like what's happening from a global perspective.
And we even haven't spoken about AI yet, which I appreciate, but that too is causing a lot of stress in the workplace.
So when you put all this together, all organizations will have some form of stress.
And stress is your body's natural reaction to pressure.
And that in small doses actually can be quite healthy.
It could help to build resilience.
It could help to bring the team closer together.
Now, when this becomes chronic, that's when you start to see burnout.
And burnout to me is when you can think about it like a marathon.
Stress is like more like short sprints and you can handle that.
Burnout's like a marathon and you don't even want to get started.
And so when you start to reach that stage, you really have a problem and we want to be more preventative there, and then rather just trying to intervene at that stage.
I mean, there are folks who are so, you know, concerned about mental health decline overall.
And I don't know whether this is part of your motivation either, but like they see meditation and wellness practices like calm as just sort of a band-aid for these bigger, more powerful structural drivers.
Yeah.
Sure.
How do you think about that?
I think people aren't thinking about it the right way, and here's how I would think about it.
If you truly want to effectuate change in healthcare, it's got to be on two fronts.
So often when we talk about healthcare, we talk about intervention.
So at the point of which someone has a problem, we figure out how we intervene, but we don't really help in the preventative state.
Like how do you prevent the problem? from ever occurring.
And so I do think there are things that calm really helps or companies like calm apps that are out there.
It just doesn't have to be calm itself that help in the preventative stage.
But also companies that are doing that need healthcare because they have the clinical programs that are proven with those outcomes.
To show an ROI.
Just people aren't utilizing them.
And that's where the system needs to work together.
I know that your biggest competitor at Calm Headspace is sort of leaned into virtual therapy with licensed professionals.
That's not something that Calm has done in the same way, right?
Is that something that... that might be changing?
I mean the idea that self-guided tools are more effective than therapy can be appealing, but also might be criticized.
Look, at Calm, many companies do this different ways, I'll tell you.
And so when you have self-guided tools, that's one part of the equation.
But actually in Calm Health we integrate with a lot of the payer and provider therapists that are out there today.
So they have their own provider networks, many of the payers that are out there today.
So we work with them to get you the right care within their own networks.
And so what we're trying to do here is not add more complexity to the system.
We're trying to add simplicity to the system.
That I think is overly complex at times and sometimes could give you too much choice and it's really hard.
So sometimes you just need to narrow that.
So I'm not saying what our competitors are doing is wrong.
I think it's just like everyone has a different kind of model for it.
I just think for me, the model is not trying to add more people into the system.
It's really trying to leverage who's there and actually thinking about it from more of a simplistic standpoint, where they actually utilize those resources that are there.
So I wanted to ask you about the recent jury verdict that found that Meta and YouTube were negligent for their social media platforms for spurring social media addiction.
How much is social media to blame for our wellness woes?
It's a complicated question.
We've seen that young children today can have addictive type tendencies.
And I've seen it within calm itself, where during COVID, for example, a large part of our user base grew within young adults.
And we had a lot of schools and universities reach out to us about working with them going forward.
So we've actually now starting working with a lot of universities and middle schools, for example.
And many of them were reaching out because they are finding that mental health isn't something that turns on when you're 17, 18 or 19 or you're an adult.
It actually starts at a much younger age.
Can it be all attributed to social media?
Maybe.
Are there other factors at play?
Yes, for many.
So I don't think it's a black and white answer per se, but I do think it is a part of the problem.
And I think many of them are trying to think through like, well, how do we solve the problem?
And for me it's just a recognition that education plus policy as I zoom out on myself needs to get more involved.
And we need mental health programs.
I'll give you an example.
Your linkage between mental health and physical health, everyone now sees that.
Everyone's like, yes, if you have mental health issues, you're gonna have physical health issues.
If you have physical health issues, you're gonna have mental health issues.
Well, guess what?
In school today, we have PE classes.
We don't have anything around mental health. in many of the schools that are out there today.
I'm not saying we should have it every day, but should we at least start to educate our youth and have more conversations about mental health at an earlier age?
I believe we should, but it's still in a very nascent stage today.
David may be leaving Calm's corner office, but he's still clearly passionate about the mission of mental well-being.
So do we need to unshackle from our phones in order to have more calm, even though calm itself lives on our phone?
We'll talk about that and more after the break.
Stay with us.
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Hi, I'm PJ Vogt.
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Before the break, Coms David Coe talked about stepping down as CEO and his goals for what's next.
Now we talk about the role of smartphones in our mental health, the pros and cons of AI, plus some practical tools that David swears by for getting through a punishing day.
Let's jump back in.
There's always been sort of a paradox at the heart of Calm that you're asking people to pick up their phones to get relief from what that phone is doing to them.
Is that a contradiction that you wrestled with?
Absolutely.
It's not lost on me that I will go out there Bob, and I'll tell people don't let the phone be the last thing you look at before you go to bed.
This is going back to our quality of sleep in the beginning, when you and I started this conversation.
But then I'm asking people to turn calm on.
And part of it, it's nuanced.
What I'm asking folks is the following.
Do things that you know may not cause you stress or anxiety right before you go to bed.
So for example, if you feel stress opening that work email, I do, I feel stressed.
When I send a work email late at night or I see a work email late at night, my quality of sleep falls dramatically because I'm thinking about it.
And the first thing I reach for when I wake up is my phone to see if that individual responded, or how did that turn out?
Today, the last thing I do is not send an email.
And the first thing I do is not pick up my phone.
And so the things that we're asking is a little bit more nuanced.
It's like use products or services because we know technology is going to be around you that you know may not cause you stress or anxiety right before you go to bed.
So you mentioned AI earlier and I want to come back to it.
What is AI doing to people's mental health?
I mean, I know you've talked about human-centered AI, which is a phrase that can feel like a buzzword for people.
How is it changing us?
Do we know yet?
I think it's evolving.
I think we sat there two years ago at the explosion of AI and we asked us we were all asking this question when will AI replace us?
And I think many of us were having this conversation.
I think it was.
And that's another thing that was causing stress and a lot of anxiety.
Now, I think we're having this conversation right now is how can AI support us?
And I think it's a conversation that's going to continue to evolve.
I mean, a lot of people have been gravitating to AI chatbots for mental and emotional issues, which is something you've resisted at least this so far at Calm.
Do you think that'll be changing?
I think we're going to continue to evolve where the market will take us.
I've used different chatbots on a personal note.
I've spent a lot of time on this.
I think it's something that people are going to turn to, because there's a real access issue that's out there today.
Look, we don't have enough therapists out there who can, or coaches that can help us.
And sometimes when you need someone to turn to, they're not available.
So if this could help from an access perspective and it's done in the right way, and I think that that is still under interpretation.
Yeah, that's still the question, right?
Because people are using, whatever their chat GPT as if it's a tailored mental health app, which it's not right.
But it's appealing to them.
It's providing something for them.
It's providing comfort.
And for many folks, it's immediate when they need it.
Again, that goes back to the access issue, that people aren't always available and they will turn to technology.
And there's an affordability issue there as well.
Let's not gloss over the fact that there's a real cost to this too.
And so where it could be helpful is today.
A lot of times, there's a lot of people that are in therapy today that might not necessarily need therapy, for example,
So they're in what we call the green.
For folks that are in the yellow, our job is to figure out how we keep them there or how we get them to green and folks in the red obviously to the yellow and so forth.
But for folks that are in the green, using an app like Calm or other services that are out there is probably good enough and you may not need to speak to anyone.
Folks in the yellow probably do need to speak to somebody, but they can also do that in more of a hybrid approach between apps that are out there today plus talking to someone.
And folks in the red immediately probably need to speak to someone today.
Right now, the system can kind of be all of a mush type system where everyone is in every lane.
And so we want to make sure the efficacy is there.
And we want to make sure that the advice that you're getting is the right type of advice, that there's clinical advice out there.
That's why so many healthcare companies today are HIPAA and HITRUST compliant.
That's not just because there are fancy names around data privacy and how your data is being used and what it's being used for.
But there's a real difference between consumer apps and in terms of what's high trust and what's within HIPAA.
The pause that you've sort of had about AI bots at Calm.
I mean, you mentioned data like.
Is some of that due to sort of trust issues around mental health data?
Because it's personal stuff, sleep patterns and anxiety levels and emotional states and all of that.
It's really personal.
And look, I don't think there's a company out there that is not going to leverage AI going forward.
But you gotta be real, intentional and thoughtful.
I think, if you're a startup with not many users and potentially nothing to lose, you may take more liberty.
But when you're a company like ours that has so many millions of users that trust and turn to you today, I think we have a real obligation to not be as flippant in that conversation.
And so that's where I continue to say AI can help us scale, but humans are the ones that are really gonna give it meaning going forward.
If you're up for it, I'd love to do a quick rapid fire round, ask you some questions, maybe get some tips from you.
Is that good?
Fire away.
All right.
Okay.
So, apart from downloading the Calm app, what's one thing we can do with our phones to improve our mental health?
Put it away when we have dinner conversations.
So one thing I do not every dinner, but at least multiple times a week when I'm with the family.
I just put that phone away.
And I try to be present.
So if there was one thing you could do is really put that phone away and be present with the people around you.
All right, what's the best way to de-stress during a long day when you don't have much free time?
Three Ws, three Ws.
This is what I do when I'm literally back to back.
I will look out the window if I'm in a meeting, just to reset a little bit, because sometimes you don't have any time.
You got three seconds.
What are you going to go do in three seconds?
You know one thing you could do, Bob?
You can go look out the window.
Two, I can grab a glass of water.
That probably takes about 20 seconds.
Or I could take a quick walk, which may be like a couple of minutes, even if it's just around the office.
So if you don't have any time look out the window, shortest amount of time, go grab a glass of water, probably the second shortest amount of time.
And the third is just take a quick lap around, whatever floor it may be, or your office, or your conference room.
And that'll be enough?
That's enough.
It's enough to reset.
And sometimes you just need these little micro breaks throughout the day.
You know, people often think that you gotta do these 10 to 15 minute long meditations.
Ring the bell, light the incense.
No, you don't have to do any of that.
You can do these little micro breaks throughout that breathing is a form of meditation.
You just might have to take a deep breath, hold it, breathe in, breathe out.
Sometimes that's all it takes.
So what's one way business leaders could encourage employees to take an appropriate mental health break?
Start the like have them talk about what they do.
Make it okay to have even the conversation, right?
So often I'll hear people say, take care of your mental health.
Okay.
How do you take care of your mental health as a leader?
And, and I think, if you can be a little bit vulnerable and talk about how you take care of yourself, then you make it okay for others to take care of themselves.
And so I think that's why so often I say it starts at the top.
You can't put all the onerous on your HR leads to go do it.
You also have to support them in this conversation.
You alluded to this earlier, but I wanted to ask specifically what's the difference between good stress and bad stress?
Well, I think Dr. D.T.
Noorakar, who was in my book and a really good friend.
She said you know, good stress is like you stress.
It could bring you closer together.
We all have stress in our life, but it's like, again, small micro doses.
And bad stress is when we go into distress.
And that's when we could fall and too much of it, again, can lead to burnout.
And it's when we find ourselves just kind of spiraling.
I've been to many companies and they'll say, how do we just eliminate stress from the workplace?
And I'm like, I don't know, but if you figure it out, you should tell me, right?
We're going to have stress.
It's always going to be there.
It's really how you handle that stress and how we have more good stress moments than bad stress moments.
Right.
Some stress in the workplace is, it's not bad.
It actually, it sort of drives, it drives creativity.
It drives urgency.
It drives outcomes, right?
Teamwork.
It drives teamwork.
It hits purpose.
It hits the mission.
It's good.
It's when we start to feel that we have back to back to back to stress moments.
There's not an understanding of the why behind the stress.
I go to a lot of companies today and I ask them like, why are you stressed?
They're like, I have all these things.
And we as leaders sometimes just keep adding to their pile of things to do.
And if we did one thing as leaders and we said okay, we're going to add something to your pile, but we're going to take something away.
A lot of times all we do is add, and that just adds to stress.
That's when it leads to distress over good stress.
Yeah.
I mean, good stress adds to our meaning, right?
It makes our work more meaningful and bad stress.
Yeah.
Is Gen Z the most stress generation ever?
That's something that talked about, you know, and I guess connected to that, like is it unfair then, for older executives to sort of be exasperated by younger employees pleading for accommodations?
Well, look, I think the question is very fair.
Without naming the company, I'll talk to you through a real life kind of scenario.
I went to a company and spoke within a leadership team.
And one of the leaders, older gentleman was like, is our younger generation too soft?
And while I really appreciated the question, I appreciate it because he felt safe in that room to ask the question and that's on his mind.
And I asked him a question right back.
I said Hey, when you were younger and you were in the workplace same thing as our Gen Z generation today did you have a laptop or desktop?
And he was like, I had a big desktop.
I said, great.
And did you have a phone that could be with you 24 seven?
He was like, no.
And I was like, so you didn't take your work home with you.
You couldn't physically carry that desktop home with you.
He's like, no, ridiculous.
I said, great.
Well, guess what?
Many of our youth today bring their work home with them, and there is an expectation of 24-7.
And so we just have to understand.
Technology has shifted the mindset of how we expect people to respond, how we expect people to work, going forward.
So their asks of us are different as well.
Okay.
So both sides need to recognize that things have shifted.
But I also do think they're dealing with more complexity than ever before.
Finally.
So how much of you leaving the CEO role is about you personally finding more calm, more balance?
I don't know if I'm going to find more calm or balance.
I think I'm going to continue to throw myself in more stressful situations.
Because that's just you?
No, I think it's just the problem.
I think the problem is so large.
And what I've found is that you could have some of the best intention companies that are out there today.
But this market is so fragmented and it's so diverse, meaning the following.
Like my parents live in Korea today.
We don't have conversations about mental health in Korea.
It is still very taboo.
It is still seen as a sign of weakness.
Now, is the conversation kind of starting?
Yes.
Would I love to go there and accelerate that conversation to where we are having in the US?
Absolutely.
So there are different conversations happening on a global perspective.
And so for myself, I just think that this problem is not going to get smaller.
It's going to get larger.
I think technology too is going to accelerate it.
I think we have to go figure out at times how we start to really work together going forward.
And I just want to be and continue to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.
Well David, I want to say that I really appreciate you coming on to this show, particularly at this moment, amid this change, and having this conversation.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Well, thank you, Bob.
For someone who just left a CEO post without a clear next step, David is remarkably centered.
But true to form.
He's using this moment to be transparent and open, to make mental health a conversation rather than a taboo topic.
I keep coming back to his parsing of good stress and bad stress.
Good stress comes in modest doses and builds resilience and drives purpose and pulls a team together.
Bad stress is more continual and leads to burnout.
The challenge these days is that external pressures like political uncertainty and AI are constant.
So what can we do?
If the world isn't changing, then we need to, to build in pauses for our teams, for ourselves, to maintain balance in an environment pushing us to the edge.
As David says, taking a break isn't weakness.
It's how you keep moving.
I'm Bob Safian.
Thanks for listening. to hone and develop your communication skills.
Learn to stress less about public speaking, make more meaningful small talk, and much more.
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And Matt is just a fantastic guy.
You're going to love having him in your ear.
Listen to Think Fast, Talk Smart wherever you get your podcasts.
Rapid Response is a Wait What original.
I'm Bob Safian.
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Our producer is Alex Morris.
Associate producer is Mashimaku Tonina.
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For more, visit rapidresponseshow.com.
